From Mel Brooks' “History Of The World Part 1: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION″:
"Your Highness, the peasants are revolting!"
"You bet! They stink on ice!"
Posted on 10/27/2010 7:19:43 AM PDT by WebFocus
It’s not as bad as it sounds. She didn’t mean it in a “these ignorant peasants sure do smell when they haven’t bathed” way. She meant it in a “I love to chat with these ignorant peasants no matter what they smell like” way. She’s a people person, guys. Accept it.
Rick Kaplan, her executive producer, says that “when she’s on the road—in Iraq with David Petraeus—she has a great way with people. People like her and she likes them. There are anchors who consider being on the road a pain in the butt. She really looks for opportunities to feel the earth and touch people.”
That’s why Couric has spent recent weeks in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is touring what she calls “this great unwashed middle of the country” in an effort to divine the mood of the midterms.
Therein lies a key reason why Couric has sometimes struggled in her current job. She’s always seemed constrained by the rigid, 22-minute format, a far cry from her freewheeling Today performances over a decade and a half. So she has devised ways to slip out of her $15 million-a-year prison—launching a Web show, engaging on Twitter, and getting out in the field.
Says James Lileks, who reminds us that “the great unwashed” is a phrase coined by one of the world’s most notoriously bad writers:
If you can name the crime that will get me committed to a $15-million-a-year-prison, I will endeavor to commit it posthaste. But perhaps the reason she’s struggled is contained in her quote: the middle of the country suspects she regards them as hobnailed dirt-smeared dullards. It fits with the idea that real America – smart, credentialed, urban, sophisticated – exists in a thin crust on either coast, with the rest of the country a parenthetical insert in the national narrative. Unwashed. Criminey.
No, amend that. “Real America,” according to the coastal cultural viziers, is middle America, and that’s the problem. “Better America” is what you get in New York. But only between certain cross-streets.
I wonder if Katie would agree, even privately. Just as everyone thinks they have a sense of humor, everyone thinks they’re a populist — or rather, everyone thinks they’re not an elitist. Salary’s no barrier: Plenty of conservative media personalities do extremely well financially yet would bristle at the suggestion that they’re among the elite. Politics is, in theory, no barrier either: I don’t think of, say, Ralph Nader as an elitist even though he’s farrrrr left ideologically. The combination of salary and politics might be lethal, though. Is there even a single rich liberal out there whom righties wouldn’t instantly assume looks at middle America as the “great unwashed”? The only one who pops to mind is Bill Clinton but I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.
Too bad we all can’t get paid to sit in front of a camera and pontificate.
This will really help CBS’s ratings in fly-over country.
“She really looks for opportunities to feel the earth and touch people.””
Al Gore needs a new masseuse.
What a miserable, nasty little [expletive deleted] Katie Couric is.
Somehow I doubt she’ll be getting a real taste of flyover country.
She went from perky to jerky.
Next time, Katie, just continue flying over.
If you are referring to our unwashed brains, Katie, I would agree.
That's what she considers the MIDDLE of the country???
Hmmmm....upon further reflection, she might have been right about that "great unwashed" crack.
“That’s why Couric has spent recent weeks in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and New Brunswick, New Jersey.”
NOT REALLY. The real WHY is that they are trying to keep her busy on wild goose chases, and keep her OFF THE AIR, while she finishes her ‘contract’.
Maybe she could show us all her colonoscopy again.............
America's hottest infobabe dem newsreader!
Hot Hot Hot! Can't wait to see her on dancing with the stars! ;o)
Quoth Harry Reid:
"In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol."
Who is Katie Couric?
couric: A unit of measure for fecal matter. One couric is equal to approximately two and a half pounds of excrement. (From South Park season 11, episode 9) ...
Did she get her shots?
Katie is just dumb. It is that simple
Katie Couric is the “Joe Biden” of news anchors. Dumb as a stump.
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Apparently--- we are now merely haggling over the price...
[15 MIL????}
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Peter Jennings, a former anchor of ABC News did take time to drive all through the real middle America. He reported back to the viewers (that’s when ABC actually HAD viewers) how hard working and decent and friendly (real) Americans are. I think he wanted to say that those people really do deserve everyone’s respect and admiration.
I’ve heard Peter Jennings; I’ve watched Peter Jennings...katie couric - you are no Peter Jennings.
Being unwashed in the sewage of coastal liberalism is a good thing.
Since Perky Katie is only going to urban areas, this sounds RACIST to me. Someone page Jesse and Al!
Only people I’ve known who are unwashed are homeless, hippies or French. Go away Couric.
To a geographically challenged idiot like Couric, anything west of Cincinnati is unsettled territory still occupied by native Indians and buffalo hunters, until you get to Los Angeles.
Great, Katie’s out spreading bedbugs beyond her native habitat.
Think of the cost incurred to get rid of the sneaky little bloodsuckers in her wake. They’re not even honest like a tick, they hide out until you’re asleep.
That’s a nice metaphor for Couric and her ilk, come to think of it.
Bedbugs.
Could she possibly be so stupid she does not know it is a pejorative not unlike “little people”
I don’t think most of us need any more ammunition to despise this woman. I’ve never forgiven her for years ago, literally SNEERING at Barbara Bush during an interview. Mrs. Bush remained poised and classy as usual.
As far as I’m concerned, Couric can just go get repeatedly colonoscoped.
LOL!
RE: Did she really use the term ‘unwashed’?
Yes she did.
From : THE PHRASE FINDER
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-great-unwashed.html
Meaning
The common, lower classes; the hoi polloi.
Origin
This rather disparaging term was coined by the Victorian novelist and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton. He used it in his 1830 novel Paul Clifford:
“He is certainly a man who bathes and ‘lives cleanly’, (two especial charges preferred against him by Messrs. the Great Unwashed).”
The mood is indeed divine, God Bless America!
oh my God!
Send her out to work a few months with Mike Rowe on “Dirty Jobs”.
You will never know the pure joy of a hot shower and plenty of soap until you have gone without one for several days and are absolutely stinking filthy from engaging in hard, dirty work.
Bliss!
Great stuff from a fine American ...
Can you make that photo a little larger? I don’t think the cameltoe is visible enough. LOL !
RE: Could she possibly be so stupid she does not know it is a pejorative not unlike “little people”
She knew. She thinks that the majority of us “unwashed” are uneducated enough to not know what she means. Like when CNN and MSNBC Reporters use TeaB@gger. They say it with a sly grin on their face, as if they are pulling one over on those not in the know.
MSM “PRIME RIB
More like McRIB!! Yuck..... LOL
It never occured to them to voluteer their money to causes other than politics. Yea gads, they should just give 90 percent of their millions of salary to government and leave us alone...that would relieve them of their guilt..
What would be some good places for her to spend a large amount of time are places like Martinsville IN, Marion IL, Princeton KY, Kansas OK (really such a town), Fairplay CO, Cheyenne Wells CO, Hays KS, Elko NV. Away from tourist spots and she cannot have access to the nice things that you get in the cities and only be allowed to shop at places like Wal-Mart.
> That’s why Couric has spent recent weeks in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is touring what she calls “this great unwashed middle of the country” in an effort to divine the mood of the midterms.
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